The author Ta-Nehisi Coates is afflicted with moral certainty.
In his latest book, “The Message,” he takes on the conflict in the Middle East. As New York Times columnist Pamela Paul described it, he writes that he has no desire to “hear both sides” — “no matter how politely articulated, no matter how elegantly crafted.” As he puts it, “My frame excluded any defense of the patently immoral.”
So, to avoid the confusion that might erupt with his readers, Coates didn’t burden them with any mention of Hamas’ October 7th attack in which they murdered, raped and mutilated over 1,200 people — the most deadly attack on Jews since the Holocaust — and then took 254 hostages, many of whom they later murdered. Because, I guess, that would mess with his “frame” of describing Israel’s response as being “patently immoral.” Apparently, murder, rape and taking hostages is not patently immoral if it is done by Hamas. I agree that Israel has gone too far in its response, but it was not a response to nothing.
This would be bad enough if it were just one writer trying to sell some books by saying outrageous things. But Coates is a star on the hard-left. His brand of moral certainty — fueled by the conviction that it’s not just okay, but an imperative, to ignore facts that conflict with your narrative — is all the rage (and I do mean rage) on college campuses and in other denizens of the left.
Writers like Ibram X. Kendi, Robin D’Angelo and Nikole Hannah-Jones have also become best sellers by practicing this kind of cherry picking. Simple arguments are very attractive.
What’s odd about this is that these writers are considered to be intellectuals when what they practice is anti-intellectualism. It’s more like a belief system, more like a religion or a cult. They believe certain things on faith and any challenge to that faith is blasphemy. It’s not just that other information should be ignored; it’s sacrilege to even bring it up.
For me, the whole point of being a liberal (I still think I am that in the most fundamental way) is to be open to other points of view, to weigh the evidence as best you can and then to choose a position based on your best judgement, always being open to change your mind in light of new information. Show me somebody who still believes exactly what he did 20 years ago and I’ll show you somebody who needs to get out more.
But that is not what Coates and the hard-left practices. They have their certainty. They are right. Anyone who disagrees with them or doesn’t profess the required level of enthusiasm and purity is wrong or worse — immoral. They reach a point where they’ve collected enough facts to bolster their argument and then any additional contradictory information is just static to be tuned out.
The latest fashion on the hard-left is something called “settler colonialism.” It holds that any state that is created against the will of the people previously living there is permanently illegitimate; no argument can counter that basic fact. To quote Pamela Paul again, “The throughline Coates draws in “The Message” from Senegal to American slavery to Trump’s America to Israel belongs to the same school of thought that ties America’s conquest of its Native American population to imperial efforts to subjugate Indigenous populations worldwide. According to settler colonialist theory, “colonial America” refers not only to the 18th century, but also to Americans living on Indigenous land today.”
But this just doesn’t hold up. American Indian tribes routinely conquered one another and even took slaves. Were they settler colonialists? All human history contains stories of one group of people taking stuff from another until the tables are turned and then somebody else takes it back.
And, of course, the neat moral dichotomy of settler colonialism ignores the messiness of the positive things that came with being conquered. Most of that messiness was (and is still) about controlling natural resources and trade routes. Sorry folks, but exploiting natural resources and robust trade is what creates wealth. Rousseau could write all he wanted to about the wonderful state of nature from his comfortable homes in France or Geneva, having never set foot in North America. Me, I like civilization and I accept the fact that progress came with brutality. We can’t undo it, nor should we want to. Coates probably wrote his tome on a laptop ultimately made possible by the very settler colonialism he now deplores.
Life and history are messy. Good things came from bad acts. Progress is tied up with cruelty. That doesn’t excuse the cruelty, but to insist on seeing everything as an easy and obvious moral choice is naive. There is no black and white. Only shades of gray.
We’ll have the Quote & Quiz for you tomorrow. Have a nice weekend.
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 
Agreed. The trouble with technology and social media, is that too many people have platforms whether they have the credentials to speak intelligently on any subject coupled with people who are not critical thinkers who absorb their messages wholesale. We know the opinions of too many people and that comes with all sorts of downsides.
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While I agree about the downsides of the internet, just to clarify: Costes is not just a random person posting on Facebook.
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I haven’t read Coates’ book and it seems like you haven’t either, but my impression is that it is focused less on the past year of war and more on the past 70 years of Israeli occupation in the West Bank & Gaza. He has made clear that he abhors the violence of October 7 etc, but what he has said is that there is no act that justifies the oppression of the Palestinians –– which began long before Oct 7.
Indeed, if you watch his recent interview on ABC, he draws an analogy to the death penalty. He is against it period, it doesn’t matter what the guy did. I know that you agree with him on that.
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Did you read the book you’re criticizing? Be honest 🙂 Religious people practice moral certainty, is it bad when they think like that? Because there are not two sides to matters of right and wrong. Or, perhaps you don’t believe in right and wrong? You say “There is no black and white. Only shades of gray.” That a good place to start, because there’s no debating right and wrong with someone who doesn’t believe in it.
For instance, there’s no reason to entertain the idea that there are two sides to slavery. It’s not closed minded to refuse to engage in debate with anyone who wants to make that argument – it’s simply deciding not to waste one’s time with pointless exercises. You start down that path with “the neat moral dichotomy of settler colonialism ignores the messiness of the positive things that came with being conquered.” Sure, if one is willing to just throw away any notion of right and wrong, you can celebrate the “good stuff” that comes from plainly and clearly wrong and immoral acts. It’s the old “they should be thankful they were slaves” routine – I never cease to be surprised when people think that way.
You continue your past practice of acting like these authors ignore what Hamas did. They do not. You say what the Israeli government is doing “was not a response to nothing,” but refuse to zoom out any further to consider additional context, conveniently setting a “beginning” that suits you (exactly what you falsely accuse Coates of doing).
If an 18th century US slave killed his master, it was a morally wrong act: nobody should kill. But your viewpoint excuses the master’s son killing thousands of slaves in response – after all, the slaves started it, didn’t they?
Coates et al push people to consider the history leading up to the killing of the master, to contextualize that morally wrong act with the vast and epic morally wrong acts that set the stage, and to condemn the disproportionate morally wrong act of the master’s son. Before you respond with “But that’s not the same thing as Oct. 7th!” Of course it’s not, it’s an analogy and there is rarely an exact duplicate example to analogize. The idea is that there are long chains of wrongs that have occurred, and it’s undeniable to understand that one side has suffered far more than the other if one is willing to open their eyes and wake up.
But you appear to believe that the slave who killed his master should have been thankful for the opportunity to be part of “civilization” and all the cool gadgets that it provides us. Some people, myself included, believe that the “progress” that comes at those costs is not progress at all. But you disagree, and “accept the fact that progress came with brutality.” The slave master did too, and I’m sure he too was surprised when his slave didn’t agree.
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So, you’re reading what you want into my words here, Rollie. Of course, slavery is wrong. And, just to get out ahead of you, I do not agree with Trump that “Hitler had some good ideas.” No, good roads do not make up for the Holocaust. But if you’re going to use the last 70 years to justify October 7th, then you also need to think about the centuries over which Jews were persecuted all over the world and you need to consider the Palestinian position that Israel has no right to exist. If Coates had run through all that history and then tried to make a case that Israel’s response was disproportionate to the Hamas attack that precipitated it then, yes, that would be an interesting case and one worth considering, even if I might end up disagreeing with it. But to say up front that you’re just going to ignore one side of the argument doesn’t make me want to give him a chance to convince me.
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You’re confusing, and I still don’t know if you believe in right and wrong. You decide that yes, it’s ok to refuse to consider arguments positing the positive results of slavery or the holocaust. But then Coates isn’t allowed to decide when he wants to refuse to consider arguments about the positive results of settler colonialism? You might be choosing to sugarcoat settler colonialism…
Your argument about the historic persecution of the Jewish is equivalent to saying that because the Europeans that came to the “new world” were persecuted in Europe, the genocide of Native Americans is justified. If the cost of establishing a state is genocide, no, the state should not exist. I don’t care if “that’s how it’s always been done.” And the model of US history is the path being pursued by Israel: the US was established by establishing apartheid, committing genocide, and concentrating the remaining existing population into small reservations while expanding the settler’s land area.
Migrating somewhere to live as equals peacefully among the existing population: not wrong. Settler colonialism: wrong.
There is no issue with Jewish people peacefully living where they want to live. If anyone wants to prevent that, it’s wrong. By all means, please live in my neighborhood. This problem doesn’t involve anyone’s faith or ethnicity – this problem involves government actions.
You further state that if Coates did x, y, and z you might respect his viewpoint even if you disagree. Maybe he did – again, did you read the book or just the propaganda?
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“If the cost of establishing a state is genocide, no, the state should not exist.” Do you consider treatment of Native Americans as genocide? If so, should the United States not exist? And if that’s your position, how would you go about dismantling it?
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Interesting that you ask if it was a genocide of the Native Americans. Open to “both sides” of that but not slavery or the holocaust? Maybe you’d prefer the term ethnic cleansing, but I’m not interested in debating semantics.
Again, do you believe in right and wrong? (FYI I’m comfortable with people not believing in right and wrong and think that’s a reasonable philosophy, even if I disagree. It’s just helpful to know people’s frame of reference when discussing things.) Also, did you read the book you’re writing about? Regardless, I’ll answer your questions even if you won’t answer mine.
The US does exist, so does Israel. Your questions get to the idea of justice, and while I believe in justice and aspire to that ideal, justice is messy and complex. It’s not possible to right every injustice of history. The more time passes, the less chance there is for a reasonable semblance of justice. It’s not up to me to decide what justice is for the victims of injustice – it’s up to them.
I don’t think it’s right that humans keep doing these things. I don’t want my tax dollars paying for it. There should be democratic self-determination for all, worldwide, in government and economics. Settler colonialism should stop. There should not be apartheid states. We should not allow genocide to occur. We should work towards justice.
I don’t care to entertain counter arguments to any of that, and I surmise that Coates doesn’t either. If you think that’s the problem with the world…
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I believe in right and wrong. I just think that it’s seldom cut and dried — hence my comment about gray areas that sparked this conversation. Let’s take the case at hand — Israel’s response to Hamas. I assume you would accept the principle that Israel had a right to respond to the October 7 attack. But, because Hamas imbeds itself with civilians, that meant that there was no effective Israeli response that didn’t involve civilians because Hamas uses them as human shields. So, given that, what response was appropriate? When 1,200 civilians were killed? In WW II the Blitz killed about 40,000 British civilians. The Allied bombing response killed about a half million Germans. In fact, the stated war aim of Allied commanders was to break the will of the German people to continue the war. But the war was started by the Nazis and they were engaged in real genocide. Were the Allies wrong to use brutal tactics against brutes? Israel has now killed something like 40,000 people in response to an attack that killed 1,200. Are they wrong, especially in light of the fact that Hamas attacked civilians with the intention of killing them while Israel is out to get Hamas fighters and civilians are collateral damage? If you accept the idea that Israel had any right to respond, then what was the acceptable number of civilian deaths? So, that’s my point. I think Hamas was wrong. I think Israel was right to respond. But I now think Israel is wrong in having gone too far. But when did it cross the line? At 1,200 deaths? At some other amount? And if it was wrong to go above a like number of deaths then were the Allies wrong to defeat Hitler in the way they did? If they were and the result was that Hitler remained in power for another year and sent more people to the gas chambers would that have been preferable?
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It’s generous of you to believe that the Israeli government is conducting this war with the goal of protecting civilian lives. We have leading Americans who don’t believe there is such thing as an innocent Palestinian of any age (check out Giuliani’s speech yesterday) but you believe that the current right wing Israeli government is trying to protect civilian lives. Okey doky.
The argument that Hamas is using human shields is lame. They’re not a traditional army, of course they are among civilians – where else would they be? Who even is “Hamas” at this point? Do you really think the IDF has a list of specific people they’re targeting? “Hamas” is an idea, which is exactly what the government wants. Just like the US “war on terror”, this is a war against a vague idea that can last forever, targeting whoever. Military actions like this only create more terrorism – unless the war succeeds in killing enough children that there are none to grow up to avenge the deaths of their family. Recall the lesson in The Godfather.
Unlike your WW2 example, there is no clear military objective for Israel’s current operations, and I appreciate that you admit that it has clearly exceeded the realm of justifiability. Baiting me into giving you an exact number of “acceptable civilian deaths” is a pointless distraction.
To recap, cutting through all the sidetracks:
1. Coates, you, and I agree that there is such thing as right and wrong, and it’s ok to not entertain arguments that excuse things that are morally wrong.
2. You think there’s grey area regarding if settler colonialism is wrong, so you think Coates should consider both sides of that idea as it pertains to Israel. Coates and I disagree.
3. Coates, you, and I agree that Israel has gone too far in this war.
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Well summarized. And I was not trying to bait you with that question. It was meant to be rhetorical. Thanks for the good conversation.
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